Christie in fitness fight for last chance of medal glory

A DECISION on Elise Christie’s continued participation in Pyeongchang will be left until the last minute after Team GB bosses admitted she faces a ‘fight against time’ to be fit for tomorrow’s 1,000 metres speed skating heats. Scans have shown no fracture of her right ankle after her high-speed crash in the 1500m semi-final on Saturday. But with the soft tissue damage and swelling, she is struggling to be fit for her final shot at redemption after an utterly miserable campaign. She has twice left the ice in tears, first after her crash in the 500m final on Tuesday and then following her smash and injury on Saturday, when the three-time world champion was carried off on a stretcher and taken to hospital. Team GB chef de mission Mike Hay said: ‘It’s a fight against time whether she can make it or not. We won’t be making a decision until Tuesday morning. We’ll have to wait and see what the doctors say.’ Her torment follows Christie’s rotten experience at Sochi 2014, where she was disqualified three times, and is an extraordinary situation for an athlete who by some distance was rated as Britain’s best gold-medal hope in South Korea. Hay added: ‘If she’s able to skate she will, I don’t think it’s a problem mentally.’